


If This Do Be Me End

by Adelheid_Desgoffe_Taxis



Series: Zubrowka: A World Inside Out [6]
Category: The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2018-02-09 20:18:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1996500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adelheid_Desgoffe_Taxis/pseuds/Adelheid_Desgoffe_Taxis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Glück macht Freunde, Unglück prüft. /A friend in need is a friend indeed./ (German proverb)</p>
            </blockquote>





	If This Do Be Me End

Count Dmitri spent that dank and rainy late-October evening at the Nebelsbad Cathedral of Santa Maria Christiana in Brucknerplatz. His second sister Laetizia had recently been snatched away by the Prussian _grippe_ raging across the small mountain country for five or six months already. Dmitri had been abroad at the time of Laetizia’s death, taking prolonged shelter in Germany; but at the news of his dear sister’s passing he had made a decision to come home for a short while and pay the last honors to her. After all, he always loved his three female siblings much more dearly than their cold, distanced, unprincipled mother who had been interested only in one scandalous affair after another and could not make herself stop even at the age of 84. His dear sisters had, in a way, replaced his mother for him since his early childhood, and for that he was constantly grateful.

 

When he arrived at Nebelsbad where Marguerite and Carolina had been living since the beginning of the Lutz Blitz, he knew that Laetizia, due to having stayed unmarried till her last day, had already been buried at the old family crypt beside her parents, in Lutz, where Dmitri certainly could not get because the damn disease was ravaging there with the utmost force. He knew, as well, that the old fruit Gustave H. who had two years ago deprived the Count of nearly all of his rightful inheritance, thanks to the last whim of the mentally feeble Dowager Countess, had been shot dead by the soldiers of a black squadron. He knew, in addition, that the faggot’s unbearable sidekick Zero or Zarrah or whoever had lost his young wife the bakery girl, together with their infant child, to the same insatiable epidemic. But, of course, those people’s problems did not bother the abject, destitute Count von Lutz in the slightest. After all, the former lobby boy still remained a concierge and a hotel owner, as well as an owner – though, of course, a very questionable one – of God only knew how many other premises in various countries, including, naturally, the Desgoffe-und-Taxis residence in the Maltese Riviera, a beautiful seaside mansion on a low peak at the end of an ancient promontory, where Count Dmitri had once experienced several blissful years, first on his own and then, shortly before his mother’s murder, together with his young and graceful wife (who nowadays remained at her uncle General von Schrecker’s Zilchbrücken estate, far from the terrible storm which had broken out in the miserable country).

 

After Dmitri had lit a candle for the late Laetizia and quietly prayed for her soul, he left the sorrowful dusk of the church softened only by the ruby and amber glow of several votive candles – there remained too few people in the once-famous resort town who were still able to visit the place and leave them here in memory of their own deceased – and finally exited the sacred building. He walked briskly, maintaining his customary military bearing, the hem of his long black felt overcoat moving in time with his long strides, his lean frame straight and tall and imposing, and his head held high. He was looking only in front of himself. But hardly had he begun to descend the old, time-worn limestone staircase of the ancient cathedral than he heard a muffled coughing, and someone’s hand suddenly seized his left forearm. The Count turned left and looked at the stranger. He smelled, at once, the highly unpleasant odor of the cheapest whiskey and old clothes.

 

The once undeniably steely-strong, but now thin and bony hand grabbing Dmitri’s coat sleeve belonged to a lone beggar. He was of medium height, slightly hunched to one side, his shoulders slouched, his left hand clutching a crooked wooden crutch onto which he leaned heavily. When he moved a little aside from the Count, the latter saw that the man had a pronounced limp on his left leg. But most striking was his countenance. His face was harrowed, yellowish, stubble-covered, its skull-resembling features sharply underlined by the orange light of an entrance lantern; his nose was broken; his skin – especially on the left side of his face – deeply scarred; his murky, watery, deep-set right eye reflected a wildish, desperate madness, and his left one – or, more likely, the absence of it – was covered with a soiled bandage tied diagonally across his head. His ruffled hair, reaching down to his neck, was still brown but for the most part replaced by grey. His mouth was open a little bit, although just enough for Dmitri to right away call to his memory those small false fangs which would have undoubtedly been revealed on the man’s lower jaw before. The fangs… The bloody false fangs… Count Dmitri was dumbfounded both by the reminiscence and by the current sight in front of him.

 

Only then did the Count lower his gaze and look more closely at the stranger’s clothes. In fact, he saw precisely what he had expected to see. Firstly, an old black leather coat, relatively dry because the man seemed to have found some shelter from the rain just finished; but terribly tattered and worn-out, with the leather patch on its left side long ago torn off and the old cut-glass flask, still miraculously remaining whole, resting in a small pocket on his chest, the small vessel’s facets glimmering weakly in the dim lamplight. Secondly, of course, a pair of shortened trousers of the same faded-black color, revealing its owner’s thin rag-wrapped ankles. Only the high-heeled boots which would have completed the man’s wardrobe at some other, better days of his existence, were now replaced with a pair of worn-out shoes which, frankly speaking, didn’t suit him at all.

 

The man's hand, which looked unusually vulnerable without the customized brass-and-lead knuckledusters once proudly adorning it, slightly loosened its grip on Dmitri’s sleeve. However, the beggar didn’t let go of the Count’s arm.

 

\- Please, ya good, kind sir, - he began in a very hoarse, plaintive, no more frightening, voice. - A couple Klübecks for a shot of booze… For a sick pathetic creep... Have mercy for a… sick… pathetic… creep.

 

For some time Count Dmitri stood motionlessly, not willing, or being able, to believe in what he was looking at. He had hoped that it was a random likeness, a ridiculous coincidence; but after these words, pronounced in a pained albeit so familiar tone, had escaped the beggar’s thin rough lips, the Count could no longer entertain any doubts.

 

\- You?.. – he managed to breathe out, not daring to look away from the one-eyed face of his former Inquiry Agent, who had, by the work of the evil fate, been made to beg for his sustenance on the steps of the Nebelsbad cathedral.

 

The Count von Lutz didn’t think that the man recognized him. It was a pure wonder he did remain alive, after what horrors had presumably befallen him in the remotest reaches of Zubrowkian Alps; but to nourish any hopes that he had managed to regain his memory intact and undistorted would be childishly naïve and completely in vain.

 

Yes, the man seemed not to remember his employer. Instead of answering the question directly, he said in that dull, shaky, dolorous voice – which made Count Dmitri wince a tiny bit at the thought of what this man had had to endure – the words he must have said to any other church-visitor, at any time:

 

\- Hard t’ be back from dead, huh?.. Me sure death would be much better for me, man. Much better.

 

Dmitri fished with his fingers inside his deep coat pocket, found two old copper five-Klübeck coins and silently held them out to the poor man.

 

\- God bless ya, sweet kind sir, - the former Private Agent said in his harsh voice, bowing slightly to the Count and sheepishly taking the coins. – Bless ya, as may He bless da monks that had cured me with those prayers an’ those herbs… fed me that broth made of, ya know, of pigs' ears or somethin’… Hadn’t seen da sun, for a lon' while… Three whole months at da cloister, in suffer… Given me dis, - his finger pointed at his chest, and Dmitri saw a small, simple, darkened wooden cross dangling from his neck on a rough piece of rope. - Huh, e’en asked me to stay with ‘em as a would-be brother, but of what use would me been?... An’ here me is, was gone from there, right when da snow thawed in da passes… Couldn’t go far, stayed ‘ere… Oh, well, good sir, ya ne’er mind.

 

So, it was the monks… the saintly brethren of the Our Holy Father of Sudetenwaltz who, in the best traditions of the mountain hospitality, had taken care of an evident murderer who had finished an innocent person within their own walls; the people who found him and saved his worthless life after whatever injuries he had sustained afterwards, someplace in the vicinity.

 

\- Alpine Sudetenwaltz… Gabelmeister's Peak... - Dmitri uttered, deeply in thought. - I’ve been sure you were dead… What had happened to you?..

 

The man did not deign to reply. Instead, he placed the coins into his own coat pocket, let go of the Count’s arm and limped slowly away, eventually sitting himself on the wide entrance parapet. After a prolonged silence, Dmitri heard the beggar have a bad fit of coughing and then start to slowly recite some verse the Count had not known before. And as far as he knew, Jopling was never one for reading poetry, especially of such kind.

 

_If dis do be me end: “Farewell!”,_

_Cried da wounded piper-boy…_

_Whilst da muskets cracked… da muskets cracked…_

_An’ da yeomen roared, “Hurrah!”…_

_An’… da ramparts fell… da ramparts… fell…_

_“Methinks me breathes me last, me fears…” – said he…_

 

The verse abruptly came to an end. Dmitri stood on the upper stair of the cathedral for some more time, waiting for the man to continue, or maybe to say something to the Count which would prove that he still remembered him, after all, or else, maybe shed some light on what had happened then in the mountains. But the beggar seemed not to recognize his former employer, seemed, in fact, not to take any notice of him anymore. He sat silent, squeezing his old crutch in one hand and his half-empty flask in another, while grimly gazing with his one mad, deep-set, glazed-over eye into the distance, thinking God only knew what about, and looking deeply and hopelessly troubled.

 

Count Dmitri sighed and went down the stairs. He still could not begin to believe that the pathetic beggar, reduced to a dirty drunken mess, looking ten years older than he should be, was none other than the same man who had once been his loyal hitman, his brave, strong and persevering agent, and the one and only person in his life he could name his faithful friend, with whom he had often drunk together or gone to a high-end brothel, only, of course, without ever condescending to interact with him on equal terms.

 

Although it was still not very late in the evening, the wide and stately Brucknerplatz, the central square of Nebelsbad, paved with large block-stones which still remained shiny and slippery from the recent rain, was totally deserted. During the last several months the town had lost more than half of its population, and what living souls there still remained here preferred not to go outside without extreme need. The Count absently ran his hand through his thick wiry hair, still black but already beginning to turn gray, and started to walk, for some superstitious reason acutely feeling the gaze of the beggar directed at his back, and at the same time being sure that the man wouldn’t be looking at him, that he, Dmitri, was of no interest to him whatsoever.

 

The man had only been doing his usual, customary job, the Count desperately tried to remind himself; but another voice stubbornly interfered, coming seemingly from the very depths of his heart, which was saying, “But it was _you_ who had sent him out on that mission, who ordered him to look for Serge; therefore, he had suffered, and is suffering now because of _you_ ”. And however much it pained him to accept this truth, he was still adamant not to accuse himself of his Agent’s present deplorable state. Customary job, habitual job, usual job, hitman job, for God’s sake, only _that_ and nothing more. And no one had asked him to survive. And in any case, he wouldn't live long, after all. Therefore, no compunctions, no regret, no pity. And the man didn’t even remember his employer, so what claims would he possibly raise?.. This man may have been Dmitri’s buddy once, and sometimes the latter did take care of him, for example he had found some good doctor one day, when the Agent had been lying feverish with a severe, festering shoulder wound given by some Dmitri’s enemy Jopling had been chasing... But now the times had changed. Now the Count von Lutz could do nothing for his erstwhile henchman and friend. He could have done nothing while the man had been lying badly injured in the faraway cloister because a pack of shameless rogues had deprived the Count himself of everything of value, and the situation as a whole had become decidedly adverse, and he had way more urgent tasks on his mind. Now Dmitri was, in a way, penniless himself, and thus he could not lend any help to his hitman, except only ten Klübecks for the man to go to a seedy bar or a backstreet winehouse or somewhere and drink himself into merciful oblivion.

 

Without once looking back, Dmitri Desgoffe-und-Taxis crossed the empty, rain-drenched, darkness-shrouded square, leaving the cathedral and the silent beggar on its stairs behind.


End file.
